


Can't Settle In These Walls

by JustAGirl24



Series: Art Therapy [5]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Attraction, Dreams, F/M, Therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-30
Updated: 2015-12-30
Packaged: 2018-05-10 10:48:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5582788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustAGirl24/pseuds/JustAGirl24
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Jaime imagines telling Elder Brother about his confusingly erotic dreams—now only of Brienne, even though he tries to dream of Cersei. He dismisses the thought immediately.</i>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Jaime has started therapy. Things are getting more confusing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Can't Settle In These Walls

Jaime's first appointment with Elder Brother was just shy of impossible. The sessions are filled with anger and sadness and horror and despair. But sometimes he leaves with a glimmer of hope that perhaps he can be more than whatever it is that he’s become. And so, three times a week, Jaime makes his way to the psychologist’s office. The door is always slightly ajar, just like his first visit. Jaime wonders somewhere in the back of his mind whether Elder Brother had been waiting just for him that day nearly a month ago, as if the door was open for a man still learning to use his left hand.

During their sessions, Elder Brother sits in a wingback chair that manages to make his large frame look almost small. There is a matching chair for Jaime—back to the wall, facing the door—and he always relishes sinking into the plush cushions. The office is small but feels open, with a window to the side that looks out onto the sea, bits of carved driftwood and beach glass scattered on the sill like small jewels. There is no desk, no clutter, no barriers.

Today’s session is no different from the others. Jaime pushes the door open and steps quietly into the room, nudging the door shut with his elbow. He sits in the empty chair across from Elder Brother. He waits for the other man to speak first, meeting his shrewd gaze with a raised eyebrow. There is always the feeling that Elder Brother knows more than he lets on, as though he sees beyond Jaime’s sarcasm and glib words, but there are some secrets Jaime is not yet willing to share.

“You shaved,” Elder Brother finally notes in a mild voice, though his eyebrows are raised.

Jaime shrugs and runs a palm over his face, still unaccustomed to the barely-stubbled skin of his jaw. He can feel a spot that he missed on his chin. “Tyrion sent me an electric shaver.” He smirks, thinking about the note his brother had sent along with it. _No one pulls off hobo chic quite like you, dear brother, but that beard is still a disgrace to the Lannister name._

He watches as Elder Brother writes something in his journal, the pen making a _scritch, scritch_ noise against the paper. Jaime sighs, knowing the other man is waiting for him to speak. He doesn’t know what he expected therapy to be like, but this isn’t it. Perhaps he expected bland, pat responses from some milksop summer child, someone who wanted to talk about _feelings,_ someone without the first godsdamned clue what war was like. Instead, Elder Brother asks a question here or there, but he is also content with silence. He hadn’t blinked an eye as Jaime detailed every last moment of his time at Ramsay’s hands—the beatings, the starvation, the torture, and then, when the Bolton bastard had grown bored with that, the flaying.

“I feel a little more like myself,” Jaime finally admits.

“Your old self? Or your new self?” Elder Brother asks, then pauses a moment to see if Jaime responds. When Jaime just stares, he moves on, “This seems like an important step for you. I understand why you’re uncomfortable with a razor. Are you comfortable with this?”

“Tyrion did his research.” Jaime gives a half-smile. “I didn’t have a problem with it.”

Elder Brother makes a little noise in the back of his throat and jots another note in his journal. He flips back a couple pages and seems to read something there. “How are the tremors?”

Jaime takes a moment to consider. “Better than they were,” he finally says. “Usually only once a day.”

“And…art therapy?” Elder Brother shoots him a rather severe look, and Jaime fights to keep from squirming in his seat. He is uncomfortable with phrases like ‘rock bottom’—from his experience, there is always worse to be found—but his outburst in art therapy had been a new low.

He’d spilled out the whole messy tale in that first meeting with Elder Brother as the other man sat in silence, then gone back to his room and stewed over it until the following afternoon, when it was time to leave for art therapy. He’d sauntered through the common area and grabbed the biggest, shiniest apple from the fruit bowl there, before making his way to the terrace. Jaime had ignored all the hostile glares and curious stares—except for one. Brienne had watched him, uncertainty clear in her astonishingly blue eyes. He’d polished the apple on his shirt and then set it on her desk with his best smile in place, the one he saved for Tyrion and his Aunt Genna, and raised an eyebrow. Brienne had rolled her eyes but smiled back, saying nothing as she pointed to where his painting rested against the terrace wall.

He’d ignored the other residents as he carried his canvas to his spot. After all, as his father always said, _a Lannister didn’t concern themselves with the opinions of sheep._

Jaime shrugs. “It’s fine. I’m playing nice with the other boys,” he reports, half-mocking.

“Hm. And Miss Tarth?”

“Also fine.” Jaime imagines telling Elder Brother about his confusingly erotic dreams—now only of Brienne, even though he tries to dream of Cersei—and all the morning erections that follow, and the particular frustration of trying to rub one out with his left hand. He dismisses the thought immediately. His cock is the last thing he wants to discuss.

“How are you feeling with the antidepressant? Any concerns there?”

Jaime sighs. “I’m not comfortable taking them. They seem to be helping, but I’d prefer to get off them as soon as possible.” Again, his father’s voice seems echo in his head, telling him it’s a weakness. And Jaime has had enough of being weak.

Elder Brother makes another note in his journal. “Are you having difficulty with side effects?”

Jaime frowns. “Such as?”

Elder Brother pushes his reading glasses further up his large, veined nose and scratches his heavy, square jaw. “Nausea and insomnia are common. Loss of sexual desire is another.”

Jaime coughs in surprise. _So much for not talking about my cock._ “That’s…not a problem,” he mutters. He meets Elder Brother’s gaze as steadily as he can, that feeling of the other man knowing more than he lets on stronger than ever. Just like that, Jaime is done with this conversation.

“Same time Friday, doc?” he says, rising to his feet.

Elder Brother says nothing about the fifteen minutes still remaining of their session, simply nods his head as Jaime walks to the door. “I look forward to it, Mr. Lannister.”

Jaime reaches the terrace in just a few minutes and steps through the entryway into the early afternoon sunlight. He is early, as has become his habit. Brienne sits at her small table, broad shoulders hunched over her journal as she scribbles away. With a grin, he edges along the wall, the stone warm against his back, until he is only a few feet away from her.

“Wench!” he says, somehow delighted at the way she doesn’t even flinch in surprise.

"Mr. Lannister," she says, ignoring his annoyed growl. Instead, she finishes her writing and closes the journal with a sigh. “ Jaime,” she lifts her head, “we’ve—”

Jaime raises an eyebrow as she stares at him, her mouth hanging open, and he’s having difficulty reading her expression. His beard hadn’t been that bad, had it? He holds her gaze, willing her to look away first, but she doesn’t. A red flush crawls up her neck and stains her cheeks.

Jaime is suddenly, forcefully reminded of his dream that morning, of Brienne underneath him, her head thrown back, her wide, red mouth open in pleasure. He remembers waking up, hard and aching. He remembers desperately trying to picture Cersei’s face, her tits, her cunt as he awkwardly stroked his cock for several long minutes, unable to come until his thoughts slipped back over to Brienne, of pale, freckled skin, red-bitten lips, and her blue, blue eyes.

He clears his throat and takes a step back, guilt washing through him as he registers his half-erection. Brienne’s mouth snaps shut, but she still watches him with that unreadable expression. He rolls it over in his brain, trying to place it as he picks up his painting from a nearby table and takes it to his easel.

Jaime stares at the canvas in front of him, his attempt at a sunrise over the sea, all seashell pink and sherbet orange, with the sapphire blue waters of Tarth underneath. From the corner of his eye, he sees Brienne move to the other side of the terrace, her broad back to him. He remembers the first time he met her, when she came to his room so many weeks ago, compassionate and no-nonsense. He remembers the way she looked at him then, calmly evaluating, none of the pity he’d grown used to, none of the jealousy and desire he used to expect as his birthright.

It hits him then, what that look of a moment ago meant. _Attraction._ It has been so long since a woman looked at him that way.

Suddenly, his not-so-innocent dreams have become more than inconvenient.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I cannot thank ikkiM enough for her invaluable beta work.
> 
> And thank you to all my readers :)


End file.
